WND Tries To Revive Fake Clinton Scandals Topic: WorldNetDaily
With Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign under way, WorldNetDaily is reliving its '90s glory, right down to Joseph Farah dreaming once again of a Hillary perp walk -- after all, one of the reason it was founded in 1997 is to serve as a repository for anti-Clinton sentiment.
Thus, we have an unbylined May 18 WND article dedicating to "a fresh look at the top 20 scandals involving Hillary" -- never mind that the article's headline says 22 scandals and the article itself lists 23 (apparently, nobody at WND has ever passed a math class in one of their homeschools). WND clearly had to pad out the article, because more than a few of these "scandals" turned out to be anything but, and were found to be so years ago -- not that WND will ever report that, of course. Let's review, shall we?First up...
3) Looting the White House
When the Clintons left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2001, they reportedly vandalized and looted the White House.
[...]
Additionally, the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, reported that ”damage, theft, vandalism and pranks did occur in the White House complex” during the presidential transition from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush – including the theft of a presidential seal.
In fact, as we've reported, the GAO found that the Clintons did not leave the White House in any worse condition than the first Bush administration left the White House for Clinton, and a review by the General Services Administration determined that "the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy."
4) Filegate: FBI files on GOP enemies
The Clinton duo was involved in a scandal known as “Filegate” in which they illegally obtaining FBI files on perceived adversaries, most of whom served in previous Republican administrations.
“In an effort to discredit the women who charged President Clinton with sexual misconduct, personal files and papers were illegally obtained and released. The courts found, under the Privacy Act, that the privacy of Linda Tripp and Kathleen Willey had been violated,” a Judicial Watch report said, citing just a few of more than 900 relevant files. Judicial Watch said Hillary had been linked “directly to the center” of the controversy.
In fact, independent counsel Robert Ray's final report on the issue states that "there was no substantial and credible evidence that any senior White House official, or First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, was involved in seeking confidential Federal Bureau of Investigation background reports of former White House staff from the prior administrations of President Bush and President Reagan."
5) Hillary’s ‘Muslim Brotherhood princess’
Huma Abedin, who served as Hillary’s longtime deputy chief of staff and has worked with her for nearly 20 years, has known ties to the Muslim Brotherhood – a group bent on “destroying Western civilization from within” – and other Islamic supremacists. As WND has extensively reported, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic supremacist connections not only extend to Abedin’s mother and father, who are both deeply tied to al-Qaida fronts, but to Abedin herself.
This is a classic guilt-by-association attack, so scurrilous that none other than Republican John McCain was moved to defend Abedin, calling it "nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable woman, a dedicated American and a loyal public servant." WND doesn't mention, as McCain did, thatAbedin's father died two decades ago and, thus, is not plotting anything right now.
Abedin found another right-wing defender in Republican operative Ed Rollins, who pointed out that WND's attacks on Abedin are "unsubstantiated" as well as "extreme and dishonest."
6) Vince Foster’s 1993 death
Vince Foster was deputy White House counsel and Hillary’s friend and law partner who had connections to the Travelgate and Whitewater scandals. In 1993, Foster was found dead in a park with a fatal gunshot wound to his mouth. As WND reported, his suicide was the subject of much speculation and three official investigations.
Investigations by the U.S. Park Police, the Department of Justice, the FBI, Congress, Independent Counsel Robert B. Fiske and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr concluded Foster’s death was a suicide. However, as WND reported in 2003, one of Starr’s key investigators challenged the official line, insisting the probe’s result was predetermined, only a few plotters were required to engineer the result, the crime scene was altered and that major newspaper editors killed stories by reporters pursuing the truth. The Washington Post reported that federal investigators were not allowed to enter Foster’s office after his death, but “White House aides enter[ed] Foster’s office shortly after his death, giving rise to speculation that files were removed from his office.”
Yep, WND is still trying to blame Hillary for Foster's death and invent a cover-up that has no actual evidence to support.
9) Travelgate: Always room for friends
In the Travelgate scandal, the staff of the White House travel office was fired to make way for Clinton cronies, including Bill’s 25-year-old cousin, who was reportedly promised the position of office director.
Hillary allegedly fired seven employees and gave the positions to her Arkansas friends. According to the Washington Post, there was an effort to award a White House airline contract to a Clinton friend.
Also, Hillary reportedly had the FBI investigate the former head of the travel office, Billy Dale, who was fired without notice and removed from White House grounds. Dale was charged with embezzlement but found not guilty of the crime in 1995. He was later audited by the IRS.
WND doesn't mention that, as the report by independent counsel Robert Ray concluded, the Travel Office employees "served at the pleasure of President Bill Clinton, and they were subject to discharge without cause." Ray's report also found evidence of financial mismanagement in the Travel Office and that "sufficient evidence existed to provide the requisite predicate for the opening of a criminal investigation."
10) Whitewater: Jail for friends, but not Clintons
The Whitewater investigation by independent counsel Kenneth Starr began in 1994 with accusations of impropriety against the Clintons and others concerning improper campaign contributions, political and financial favors, and tax benefits. Its initial subject was a failed Arkansas real-estate venture involving the Clintons in the 1980s that was linked to the collapse of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, a Little Rock savings bank run by the Clintons’ Whitewater business partners. Clinton friends James and Susan McDougal went to jail for fraud (James died while serving his sentence), as did former Arkansas Gov. Jim Tucker and municipal judges David Hale and Eugene Fitzhugh.
The probe eventually expanded to include the death of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster, the dismissal of White House travel office employees, receipt by the White House of a number of FBI files and the issue of whether President Clinton lied or obstructed justice to hide an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
WND doesn't mention that the reason the Clinton's were never prosecuted was because Robert Ray found that whatever evidence he found was " insufficient to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that either of them committed any criminal offense." The fact that Starr's Whitewater investigation spread so far afield to an affair is the reason why there aren't independent counsels anymore.
15) Clinton body count: ‘You find dead people’
“The Clinton body count,” first published in WND and later circulated by Linda Tripp to Monica Lewinsky, is a collection of names of people associated with Clinton administration scandals who have died mysterious and often violent deaths. Reporter David Bresnahan broke the story of the list during the summer of 1997 while researching his book, “Cover Up: The Art and Science of Political Deception.”
21) Peter Franklin Paul: Another Hillary friend goes to prison
As WND reported, Hillary was named in a lawsuit brought by Peter Franklin Paul for allegedly directing to her 2000 Senate campaign an illegal, in-kind contribution from Paul that included a fundraiser at the exclusive Spago restaurant in Beverly Hills, a tea hosted at the Beverly Hills home of socialite Cynthia Gershman and a lavish, A-list, million-dollar-plus Hollywood gala honoring Bill Clinton. At the trial of Clinton’s finance director for the 2000 senatorial campaign, David Rosen, the government told the jury Paul personally gave more than $1.2 million to produce the events.
Paul, a former business partner of Spider-Man creator Stan Lee who sued Bill for fraud and accused Hillary of hiding nearly $2 million in Senate campaign donations, alleged they sabotaged the media company he formed with Lee to get out of a $17 million agreement made with Bill Clinton to serve as an international promoter for the company after he left the White House. Paul was indicted in June 2001 for manipulating the price of the stock in his company, Stan Lee Media, as it was collapsing. A judge determined Paul didn’t profit from the attempt to save his company, but he accepted a plea bargain and served three years in prison. WND reported in 2012 that Paul charged Attorney General Eric Holder and his Justice Department obstructed justice by reneging on a sentencing agreement.
“Hillary is carrying out her promise to finally destroy my family to punish me for exposing the corruption that elected her to the Senate,” Paul told WND at the time.
As we've noted, Paul was claiming a Clinton conspiracy against him -- thus getting rabid Clinton-haters like WND on his side -- in an effort to deflect the fraud charges against him. If Paul is the upstanding guy WND portrays him as, why did he flee to Brazil to evade prosecution, then fight extradiction back to the U.S. for two years?
And, as we've also noted, the fact that -- as WND admits -- Paul wasn't indicted until 2001 means that the Bush administration, not Hillary Clinton or any other member of the Clinton administration, was leading the prosecution against him. That sort of blows up his whole victim schtick.
And that's just the beginning. Imagine if we had the time to examine in detail all 22 (or 20, or 23) so-called "scandals" on WND's list.
But that, of course, is what WND is counting on -- to repeat the lies until people are tired of correcting them. Joseph Farah and Co. think that this is some strange form of "journalism," but it's actually yet another reason why nobody believes WND.
CNS Finally Reports On Duggar Scandal -- In A Blog, Not As 'News' Topic: CNSNews.com
It's taken surprisingly long for an organization that professes to be a "news" operation, but CNSNews.com has finally gotten around to reporting on the Josh Duggar sexual molestation scandal. But, oddly, it still doesn't consider this "news."
Melanie Hunter's May 22 item on Duggar is not presented as "news" but, rather, as a blog post -- the same status also afforded to Michael Chapman's stenography of Franklin Graham and posts dedicated to the stylings of "Evan Sayet, the nation’s leading conservative, political comedian."
Hunter also presents the Duggar scandal in as perfunctory a manner as possible -- apparently finally moved to write about it only after the Duggars' "19 Kids and Counting" show was canceled because of the revelations -- keeping to reporting only statements and refusing to dig into the issue. For instance, Hunter notes that Josh Duggar's victims "live[d] in the Duggar home," but fails to note the obvious conclusing that Duggar was molesting his sisters.
Hunter also uncritically repeats a claim that Duggar was "sent to a Christian treatment program," but ignores reporting that the "treatment program" was actually some guy in the home remodeling business who was actually "more of a mentor ... kind of" rather than someone with actual counseling credentials, which you'd think would be important in dealing with a teenager who molested his sisters.
Hunter uses her dry, perfunctory writing to hide the fact that the Duggar family waited a year to report Josh's behavior to authorities. She also doesn't mention that CNS has favorably promoted Duggar in the past.
Hunter's treatment of the Duggar story is not the only sign CNS would rather ignore it. CNS' Twitter account has not promoted the story, nor have the Twitter accounts of editor in chief Terry Jeffrey and managing editor Michael Chapman. And the Duggar story is still being censored on other MRC websites, such as NewsBusters, MRC TV, and the main MRC website.
On May 1, CNSNews.com published a fluffy interview with Josh Duggar, oldest son of the Duggar family of "19 Kids and Counting" fame, in which he declared that “marriage is central to the family and every single child deserves a mother and father” and complained that "there is an agenda to silence people of faith, those who hold a dissenting opinion."
Actually, CNS is the one who's engaged in the act of censorship, making sure no bad news about the Duggars appears on its "news" pages.
Earlier this week, news broke that Josh Duggar, as a teenager, was named as an "alleged offender" in an underage sexual abuse probe. Technicalities and other issues in the police investigation led to Duggar failing to be prosecuted in the case.
People magazine reports that the case involved Duggar molesting five underage girls as a teenager. The duggar family states that he underwent counseling and that he regrets his actions, he has since resigned from his job as executive director of the Family Research Council's political action division.
Yet none of this is newsworthy at CNS -- it has not reported a single word about Josh Duggar's scandal, even though it has been two days since the story first broke, and even though it would not hesitate to do so if the perpetrator was not a cultural conservative.
So, what is newsworthy at CNS today? Likening President Obama to Osama bin Laden. No, really.
It seems CNS would much rather do fluffy interviews to advance right-wing ideology than engage in actual journalism without fear or favor.
UPDATE: Wonkette notes that according to the police report, four of the five victims of Josh Duggar's molestation were his own sisters.And Right Wing Watch reports that Duggar has a history of claiming that gays -- not people like himself -- are a threat to child safety.
If CNS reports this at all, it will be couched in some heavy-duty spinning to highlight the power of Christian redemption or something. Again, a whitewashing that CNS would never provide to anyone who isn't a cultural conservative.
When Klayman Is Losing, He Smears Judges Topic: WorldNetDaily
Whenever Larry Klayman doesn't get his way in the courtroom -- which is frequently given how terrible a lawyer he is -- he throws temper tantrums at the judges who rule against him, typically hurling personal insults at them. He does this yet again in his May 15 WorldNetDaily column.
Klayman starts off in his usual style by continuing his two-decade-old grudge against judge William Keller, whom he slanders as "both a drunk and an anti-Semite, among other vices and prejudices," whining that he "had fined me $25,000 for standing up for my clients and moving to disqualify him from the case."
As you'd expect, Klayman is hiding the truth about what happened. As the appellate court ruling upholding the sanctions against Klayman detail, Keller was more than justified in issuing them. noting that Klayman was "failing to provide advanced written notice of the prior art appellants intended to use during trial, as required by 35 U.S.C. § 282; failing to have [his client] appear in court on the appointed day after the trial court had granted an extension of time to allow for [his client's] travel from Taiwan and preparation by counsel; and lodging a late request for a jury trial on the patent issues in the case after admittedly waiving a jury trial for such issues at a pretrial status conference," not to mention "Mr. Klayman's practice of continuing to speak after the trial judge requested silence." As a result, Keller barred Klayman from representing anyone in his courtroom ever again. The ruling also notes that Klayman "rejected an opportunity to have a magistrate judge rather than Judge Keller try the case" because he felt Keller had "a good sense of humor. That's important."
Regarding Klayman's unsubstantiated anti-Semitism smear against Keller, the ruling notes that Klayman did not carry "the heavy burden necessary to substantiate" his claim during his appeal, and that Klayman built his bias case against Keller "largely on sources entirely unrelated to the proceedings" due to his refusal to pay for a transcript of the court proceedings in question. The appeals court called Klayman's refusal to spring for acopy of the trial transcript, even to help his own case, "poor practice," which tells us that Klayman has been a terrible lawyer for a very long time.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Klayman's newest anti-judge tirade is against G. Murray Snow, who's presiding over a case involving Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whom Klayman is representing. Klayman calls Snow "unethical, unhinged and rabid," even though he can much more easily apply those words to himself. Klayman rants:
You see, Judge Snow is the federal judge who has been conducting a civil and potentially criminal contempt proceeding against “America’s sheriff,” Joe Arpaio, of Maricopa County, Arizona. Arpaio had been accused by none other than the ultra-leftist, communist-inspired group the ACLU of violating Snow’s order in a civil suit enjoining Arpaio and his office from ethnically profiling (illegal) immigrants at places like day-worker sites. Importantly, during the course of the contempt proceeding, it was reported that Judge Snow’s wife had said to her friends at a public restaurant that her husband was going to use the case to destroy Sheriff Arpaio to prevent him from being re-elected.
These statements are now confirmed. Despite his conflict of interest and obvious prejudice against Sheriff Arpaio, just in the last week or so, during the course of the trial, Judge Snow called the sheriff to the witness stand and, asking leading questions, interrogated him and later his chief deputy, Jerry Sheridan, about investigating the judge over his wife’s prejudicial comments. Judge Snow was thus strategically using a judicial proceeding upon which he was presiding, for his own personal reasons, to cover up the admissions made by his wife, unethically creating a clear conflict of interest. As bad, during the course of the questioning, Snow used the opportunity to go off on an irrelevant witch-hunt regarding what the sheriff and his deputies were allegedly doing with informant Dennis Montgomery, also my client. Montgomery is a whistleblower who has the goods on illegal surveillance by the NSA and CIA.
The Phoenix New Times, an ultra-left pro-illegal-immigrant rag – which hates Sheriff Arpaio because he is conservative and opposes illegal immigration – had published defamatory postings claiming that Montgomery was assisting Arpaio in investigating Judge Snow. While this was false, Judge Snow used this Internet rag to then justify his ordering up the production of all documents from the sheriff’s office concerning Montgomery. Of course, Montgomery has nothing to do with the reason for the contempt trial, which is over the ACLU’s charges of the sheriff violating a court order prohibiting profiling. The judge then ordered the ACLU’s lawyers and other counsel to contact the CIA about the sheriff and Montgomery, falsely attempting to implicate them in wrongdoing with the federal government.
Klayman lacks the guts to link to the Phoenix New Times articles in question. It's unclear where Klayman gets his claim that it reported Montgomery investigated Snow; a June 2014 article exposed Montomery's links to Arpaio but states only that Montgomery "convinced Arapio of this paranoid fantasy" that Snow was out to get him.
And far from being "a whistleblower who has the goods on illegal surveillance by the NSA and CIA," Montgomery is a notorious scammer. That New Times article reported how Montgomery "snookered the CIA, the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Air Force into believing he had software that could decode secret messages to terrorists, supposedly embedded in broadcasts of the Al Jazeera Media Network." It was a lie, but it was not discovered until after Montgomery's firm had acquired multi-million-dollar contracts with the government.
And as Dr. Conspiracy notes, Montgomery has also been feeding information to Arpaio's "cold case posse" on Obama's "eligibility," resulting in allegedly "earth shattering" information that the posse has yet to release.
While Klayman rails against Snow's questioning of Arpaio, the one thing he can't do is claim it was illegal, because it wasn't. And as the New Times detailed, it did expose that Arpaio had an attorney secretly investigate Snow's wife, and also exposed the extent to which Montgomery is involved with Arpaio's office. These are things Klayman, as Arpaio's attorney, would presumably would not want to have made public.
If the New Times got any information wrong, it's because Klayman's client refused to tell the truth, not because it's an "Internet rag."
Klayman then declared his intention to follow in Arpaiio's footsteps and harrass the judge for showing him up:
I am not finished using the legal system to remove this scourge of a federal judge. In the end, he undoubtedly will not only be forced to get off the case, but will be a top candidate for impeachment. In this regard, an ethics complaint, which Montgomery was forced to file, is also pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and is being sent to the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees impeachment of federal judges.
Judges and the courts can be our most important public servants. If they do their job ethically, they can protect us from the tyranny of the other two branches of government. But when they act in an unethical and illegal fashion, as Judge Snow has in trying to destroy a fine law enforcement official like Sheriff Arpaio and a courageous whistleblower like Dennis Montgomery, they are the biggest current threat (along with President Barack Hussein Obama, himself, who not coincidentally was behind the initial federal investigation of the sheriff along with his comrades at the ACLU) to a healthy and functioning constitutional republic!
Klayman apparently still hasn't learned the lesson that the system also has recourse against attorneys who abuse the system and file frivolous lawsuits.
Indeed, WND, publisher of Klayman's column and user of Klayman's so-called legal services in the past, is apparently so tired of Klayman's incompetence that it went with Judicial Watch -- the organization Klayman founded and left, and then sued -- to sue the government for documents in the Miriam Carey case.
That's gotta hurt, but Klayman brought it on himself with his incompetence and his serial judge-smearing.
You'd think that with all the squawking the Media Research Center has done about George Stephanopoulos' conflict of interest that it would be more forthcoming (or simply forthcoming, period) about its own conflicts of interest -- like its cross-promotional business relationship with right-wing radio host Mark Levin -- particularly at its "news" division, CNSNews.com.
Well, you'd be wrong. A May 14 CNS blog post by Levin fanboy Michael Morris reads like a press release, touting how Levin "continues to gain syndication steam" and lists the new stations broadcasting his radio show. Morris fawningly notes that Sean Hannity has dubbed Levin "The Great One."
Needless to say, Morris makes no mention of Levin's business deal with the MRC.
And in an apparent bid to keep his fanboy status up-to-date, Morris wrote a May 15 post transcribing Levin's comments on Stephanopoulos' conflict of interest -- which, ironically, again fails to mention his employer's conflict of interest with Levin but does note that Levin mentioned the "Media Research Center’s wonderful NewsBusters."
Apparently, the MRC wants to make its attacks on Stephanopoulos as hypocritical as possible.
MRC Rides Stephanopoulos Controversy To Boost Anti-Hillary Book Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has been getting a lot of mileage out of the revelation that ABC's George Stephanopoulos donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation; one fundraising email declared Stephanopoulos "corrupt" while begging for money. As Paul Waldman at the Washington Post pointed out, Stephanopoulos' conflict of interest plays into conservatives' anti-media agenda, and that "From now through next November, conservatives will claim that every story that reflects poorly on Hillary Clinton is just accurate reporting, while every story that reflects well on her (or poorly on Republicans) demonstrates the media’s pernicious liberal pro-Clinton bias."
To do all that, of course, the MRC has to studiously ignore all the times that Fox News personalities advocated for causes they had personal or financial connections to, as well as all the conservatives who have donated to the Clinton Foundation, like Newsmax's Christopher Ruddy.
The MRC's anti-Stephanopoulos propaganda campaign extends to its "news"division, where a a May 15 article by Susan Jones quotes Peter Schweizer, author of an anti-Hillary attack book, wanting a do-over on his interview with Stephanopoulos. Jones claimed that during the interview, "Stephanopoulos repeatedly questioned the accuracy of 'Clinton Cash,' insisted that there was no evidence of criminality on the part of the Clintons, and suggested that Schweizer was conducting a partisan attack."
But as we noted, Schweizer admitted during his interview with Stephanopoulos that he had no evidence to back up the allegations in his book.
Jones doesn't mention that the accuracy of Schweizer's book has been justifiably question because it does, in fact, contain numerous errors -- more than 20, according to one count. The fact that several of those inaccurate claims have been corrected or deleted in an e-book version would seem to be an admission of guilt on that count.
Further, Schweizer is on record as apparently lying about his purported bipartisanship. After Schweizer claimed that he was working on something about the finances of Jeb Bush, his publisher denied that any book by Schweizer about Bush similar to "Clinton Cash" was in the offing. Further, the think tank Schweizer runs, the Government Accountability Institute, has funding ties with the Koch brothers and right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer, who you might remember as the sugar daddy financing the increasingly quixotic campaigns by Oregon right-winger Art Robinson for Peter DeFazio's congressional seat (the other main booster of which has been WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian).
So, yeah, Schweizer is an inaccurate reporter driven by partisanship. But the MRC doesn't want you to know that.
On a day designed to fight homophobia, the notoriously homophobic CNSNews.com is determined to perpetuate it.
A May 16 CNS article notes that President is marking the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. Look at the picture CNS chose to illustrate the article with:
Apparently, CNS believes all gays dress scantily and march down streets in parades, since it considers this photo to be representative of all gays and transgenders.
As per usual in such CNS articles, the comment thread is thousands of comments long and filled to the brim with anti-gay attacks -- which seems to be the entire point of posting such an article.
WND Columnist Takes Coolidge Out of Context Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bill Federer has a thing he does called the "American Minute," which his website tells us is "broadcast daily across America and by the Internet." WorldNetDaily republishes his "American Minute" things, which is why we have gotten involved.
Federer's May 15 "American Minute," as republished at WND, begins this way:
President Calvin Coolidge warned in a speech given May 15, 1926, at the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia: “But there is another … recent development … the greatly disproportionate influence of organized minorities. Artificial propaganda, paid agitators, selfish interests, all impinge upon members of legislative bodies to force them to represent special elements rather than the great body of their constituency. When they are successful, minority rule is established. … The result is an extravagance on the part of the Government which is ruinous to the people and a multiplicity of regulations and restrictions for the conduct of all kinds of necessary business, which becomes little less than oppressive. …”
All those ellipses should set off warning bells that something is being left out. Indeed, if you look at Coolidge's original speech, you'll find what that is:
But there is another element of recent development. Direct primaries and direct elections bring to bear upon the political fortunes of public officials the greatly disproportionate influence of organized minorities. Artificial propaganda, paid agitators, selfish interests, all impinge upon members of legislative bodies to force them to represent special elements rather than the great body of their constituency. When they are successful minority rules is established, and the result is an extravagance on the part of the Government which is ruinous to the people and a multiplicity of regulations and restrictions for the conduct of all kinds of necessary business, which becomes little less than oppressive. Not only is this one country, but we must keep all its different parts in harmony by refusing to adopt legislation which is not for the general welfare.
So Coolidge is actually specifically referring to "direct primaries and direct elections" as resulting in "paid agitators," not making some sort of sweeping statement. But what does that mean?
The 1926 book "American Labor and American Democracy" provides some context, explaining that Coolidge is actually railing against the direct election of U.S. senators, enacted a decade earlier, and the practice of allowing voters to select party candidates in a primary election instead of party officials doing it.
In other words, Coolidge is complaining about the effects of what he saw as too much democracy -- as if letting party officials or state legislatures control the process was ever free of propaganda, paid agitators, and selfish interests. And WND itself is nothing if not a font of artificial propaganda, paid agitators, and selfish interests.
You can see why Federer edited all that stuff out about taking away the voice of voters and insisting that a small cadre of party officials knows better than the general public.
CNS Just Can't Stop Bashing John Holdren Topic: CNSNews.com
For years, CNSNews.com has been bizarrely obsessed with Obama administration science adviser John Holdren, plucking 40-year-old quotes out of context in order to attack him as an extremist. CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey -- apparently feeling it's been way too long since he's bashed Holdren -- resumes his jihad once more in his May 13 column, desperatelhy stretching to claim that Albert Einstein has proven Holdren's 40-year-old questions about sustainability wrong. Because you cannot see all the stars in the sky as Einstein claimed, Jeffrey theorizes that this somehow also means the Earth is infinitely sustainable:
Would it have been better, as Obama's future science adviser argued, to halt such net additional human beings from coming into existence in the first place?
Did God truly fail to provide sufficient material resources for the human beings He created and to whom He gave sovereignty over the material world?
The answer to the second question is found in the stars above: We cannot count them all yet, let alone survey them, so we have no idea how vast are the material resources our Creator has put within our potential reach.
The answer to the former question is found by looking back across the extraordinary and sometimes unanticipated improvements in the material well-being of the human race that have occurred just since Obama's science adviser called for inducing "the United States government to assume its responsibility to halt the growth of the American population."
Jeffrey seems to have missed the famines throughout history (Somalia, for example) that were at least in part the result of insufficient material resources for a given area.
Jeffrey has been so obessed with Holdren's purported views from 40 years ago -- from books he co-authored that may or may not reflect his actual views -- that he nor anyone else at CNS has ever bothered to ask Holdren in a thoughtful manner about whether he still holds those views. Instead, CNS cared only about ambushing Holdren with gotcha questions -- something that generates lots of clicks to the CNS website but does nothing for journalism or civilized debate.
But then, getting clicks and attacking anyone who doesn't adhere to the Media Research Center's right-wing views -- not engaging in journalism or civilized debate -- is how CNS rolls.
The president has been catching flak for having honored Freddie Gray by sending three White House representatives to his funeral, and similarly honoring Michael Brown last year, while neglecting to send anyone to the funerals of several police officers killed in the line of duty in recent months. One would have to be profoundly gullible to believe that these instances of “careless disregard” were oversights.
So, the White House loves thugs, hates cops, and no one seems to care. What else is new, right?
Well, now I’m wondering precisely what the Obama White House working protocol is relating to these funerals: Is it four White House representatives if you were a real bada– black thug, three if you were an “average” black thug, maybe two for a dead white thug of some repute, one for a black cop, whereas white cops slain in the line of duty get nothing?
[...]
I’ll have to admit that First Sasquatch Michelle Obama outdid her husband concerning racialist gaffes in one fell swoop over the weekend, when she bloviated at length before a lectern at Tuskegee University. Her so-called commencement address was largely a stream of self-pitying, self-righteous, bitter, paranoid racialist propaganda.
The MRC's 'Affirmative Action' Hypocrisy Topic: Media Research Center
Last week, the Media Research Center's Ken Shepherd got all huffy when MSNBC pundit Michelle Bernard "savaged newly-announced GOP presidential aspirant Dr. Ben Carson tonight by alleging his success is all owed to 'affirmative action.'"
Fast forward to this week, when Fox News guest Angela McGlowan asserted that Michelle Obama owed her entry into Princeton and her job at a prestigious law firm to "affirmative action."
The reaction from Shepherd and the MRC? Crickets.
If Shepherd and the MRC want to be taken seriously as an actual media watchdog, they might want to try being offended at all baseless attacks on blacks instead of just the ones on conservatives.
WND Whitewashes Another Troubled Homeschool Family Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has a sad tradition of defending homeschoolers no matter how horrible and dysfunctional they are, and of hiding the reality of that horribleness from its readers.
That tradition continues in a May 10 WND article by Leo Hohmann, who does his whitewashing best to kick things off:
A homeschooling couple was arrested and had all 10 of their children taken by the state Thursday after a local sheriff acted on a tip about alleged poor living conditions at their 26-acre homestead where they live “off the grid.”
The Naugler family lives a “back to basics” lifestyle that few would choose, but it makes them happy, says a family friend. The couple has been married almost 20 years and are expecting their 11th child in four months. They have six dogs, two cats and a few farm animals on their “Blessed Little Homestead” in rural southwest Kentucky, according to their Facebook site.
But the Breckinridge County Sheriff’s Office has charged homeschool dad Joe Naugler with the misdemeanor crime of “menacing” and child welfare agents are investigating allegations of unfit living conditions for the couple’s children.
Hohmann then ups the drama:
Sheriff Todd Pate showed up at the homestead Wednesday evening with at least one other deputy. When Naugler’s wife, Nicole, saw the police cars she got in her vehicle and drove off with her two oldest sons. The other eight children were off site with their dad. Nicole, who is five months pregnant, was stopped not far from the homestead and reported being slammed belly-first against the police cruiser. She suffered bruises to both arms, according to her account and photos placed on the family’s Facebook page.
[...]
Sheriff Todd Pate showed up at the homestead Wednesday evening with at least one other deputy. When Naugler’s wife, Nicole, saw the police cars she got in her vehicle and drove off with her two oldest sons. The other eight children were off site with their dad. Nicole, who is five months pregnant, was stopped not far from the homestead and reported being slammed belly-first against the police cruiser. She suffered bruises to both arms, according to her account and photos placed on the family’s Facebook page.
Hohmann leaves out the part where audio recordings show that Nicole Naugler did, in fact, resist arrest, ultimately resulting the woman daring police to shoot her.
Hohmann then does his best to romanticize the Naugler's "off-the-grid" lifestyle:
The family’s Facebook page, shows a small, wood-frame shack of 280 square feet with an extended porch area covered by a tarp. They have a generator for power and are in the process of seeking donated materials to enlarge the wood cabin, according to their Facebook site.
A family friend, Pace Ellsworth, told WND the Nauglers and their 10 children were a happy family that chose to live outside of modern systems.
The family subscribed to a method of homeschooling called “unschooling” in which children learn through experience rather than from textbooks and they focus on subjects that interest them. “They chose to live off grid and chose to live as homeschoolers with no curriculum, and they just chose to live that way and to have their children have a more eclectic experience, a way of life that most people don’t experience anymore,” Ellsworth said. “It’s become sort of a thing in the world to go off grid. And going off grid doesn’t mean Davy Crockett anymore, it means having solar panels, or a wind farm and having a little more freedom, more freedom as opposed to living with a corporation, or the state.”
The Nauglers’ tiny cabin has no running water. They use an outhouse with a latrine and have a working septic system, Ellsworth said. They cook on a wood stove.
Hohmann doesn't mention the implications of two parents and 10 children living in a shack of a mere 280 square feet. Also, the facts are a little different than the story Hohmann tells.
The Nauglers posted the state Child Protective Services report to their Facebook page (which seems to belie the whole off-the-grid thing), and it reports questionable aspects of the Nauglers' poperty -- “numerous piles of garbage, broken glass and nails were also scattered about the property,” while the family lived in “two makeshift tents,” and a shed (also of the “makeshift” variety) housed several animals; the report also noted that the property had no running water or septic system.
Hohmann also didn't report the fact that, as Nicole Naugler admitted on Facebook, at least some of her children don't have birth certificates or Social Security numbers.
Hohmann also ignored the fact that even other homeschoolers disapprove of the Nauglers' lifestyle. Raw Story highlighted one homeschooling parent writing, "I home school my children, (and) my children are taught the things they need to know to be successful. What the Naugler’s (sic) do is simply call it home schooling when in fact they are too lazy to actually home school them.”
It appears Hohmann is either a lazy reporter who can't be bothered to seek all the facts before reporting a story, or he knows the facts but is dishonestly hiding those inconvenient to the Nauglers and WND's homeschooling agenda.
WND's Klayman Likens McCain To His North Vietnamese Captors Topic: WorldNetDaily
Oh, Larry Klayman. It's a good thing nobody takes you or your publisher, WorldNetDaily, seriously these days, or otherwise someone would care about the enormously stupid thing you said about John McCain in your May 8 WND column about Republicans who support NSA metadata collection:
It is thus clear that the problem today is not just the self-described Emperor Obama, who like King George III, governs by executive fiat and not the will of the people, but also those establishment Republican leaders, like McCain, Graham, Rubio, Christie and other lackies of omni-powerful government who believe in the words of their now-deceased soul brother, Alexander Hamilton, that the people are a great beast. These disgraceful and compromised politicians think that they can decide for the rest of us what is necessary and right – in this case wholesale violation of privacy rights in what Judge Leon calls in his 2013 order “almost Orwellian.” (See www.freedomwatchusa.org.)
Well, I have news for McCain and the establishment wing of the Republican Party: If he thinks that what the NSA (and also the CIA) have been doing is peachy keen, then perhaps he has more kinship to Ho Chi Minh and the senator’s dictatorial former North Vietnamese jailers at the Hanoi Hilton than our Founding Fathers.
But since you are a failed lawyer associated with an extremist website with no credibility, you will continue to be ignored. As you should be.
The April unemployment numbers were good enough that CNSNews.com's Ali Meyer had to at least acknowledge them before burying them in cherry-picked bad news, as is the CNS mandate.
Meyer's May 8 CNS article grumbled that "The unemployment rate dropped from 5.5 percent in March to 5.4 percent in April even as the number of people in the labor force increased from 156,906,000 to 157,072,000 and the labor force participation rate increased from 62.7 percent to 62.8 percent."
Mayer complained that unemployment rates for blacks "showed little or no change in April," but she's downplaying the situation. In fact, black unemployment dropped 0.5 percent, falling under 10 percent for the first time in nearly seven years.
Even though CNS has previously highlighted higher African American unemployment rates, this decrease did not merit its own article from Meyer. Instead, she cherry-picked a different number more favorable to CNS' anti-Obama agenda and dedicated an entire article to how "A record 56,167,000 women, age 16 years and over, were not in the labor force in April."
Just another reminder that CNS isn't really into "news" -- it has fully become the propaganda arm of the Media Research Center.
CNS' Chapman Finds A Franklin Graham Utterance He Won't Repeat Topic: CNSNews.com
We'vedocumented how CNSNews.com managing editor Michael Chapman has a peculiar obsession with documenting every last word right-wing evangelical Franklin Graham says. But it turns out Chapman's fixation with Graham has its limits -- when his words conflict with the agenda of Chapman's employer.
On the May 6 edition of "Fox & Friends," Graham denounced the Muhamma-cartoon exhibit in Texas where two would-be gunmen were killed, saying the attendees "were wrong" to mock Muslims:
"As a Christian, I don’t like it when people mock my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, and what this event in Garland, Texas, was doing was mocking the Muslims. And I disagree with Islam, I don’t believe in Islam, but I’m not going to mock them and make fun of them," Graham said on "Fox and Friends."
Graham said that the cartoon contest, organized by Pam Geller's anti-Islam group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, was offensive.
"I’m discouraged that people would do this. We live in a society now where there’s no civility, there’s no respect, we don’t honor people who have differences. We only attack each other. And so I agree that the folks in Garland, Texas, were wrong," he said. "They had the right to speak. I have free speech, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go around and cuss people just because I have the freedom to do that."
He later added that even though he did not approve of the event, responding with violence was "wrong."
Even though Chapman has devoted dozens of articles in the past several months to Graham's various utterings over the past several months, he has yet to report this one, according to his article archive.
Why? Presumably because it runs counter to the expressed agenda of the Media Resarch Center, which own CNS, to support Geller.
The same day Graham made his remarks, CNS published a column by Chapman's boss, Brent Bozell, and Tim Graham expressing their support for the "exercise of free speech" at the Muhammad cartoon contest, insisting that while it was "provocative... it wasn't meant to result in two Islamic extremists showing up with assault rifles."
They don't know that, of course; it's entirely possible Geller wanted to provoke a violent response in order to justify her anti-Muslim agenda. Instead, Bozell and Graham complain that some in the media described Geller as "relentlessly shrill and coarse in her broad-brush denunciations of Islam." They don't dispute the accuracy of the claim, however.
Bozell and Graham go on to blame the Southern Poverty Law Center for an "assassin using their "hate map" to go to FRC's building and open fire, seriously wounding a security guard, with the intent to kill as many staff as possible, before being subdued." They add: "The leftist media know that. And still use SPLC as their source."
Funny, we don't recall Bozell or Graham running away from the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue after Scott Roeder had contacts with the group and later murdered abortion doctor George Tiller. In fact, the MRC has pretended there was no link at all between Roeder and the anti-abortion movement, and Bozell himself effectively endorsed Tiller's murder, calling him "a monster who personally murdered 60,000 babies."
If the MRC can't be bothered to unequivocally denounce a group for its links to a murder, Chapman certainly isn't going to challenge that sort of agenda.
UPDATE: Chapman added a post quoting Graham bashing ISIS. He's still ignoring Graham's statement denouncing Geller.
With Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign under way, WorldNetDaily is reliving its '90s glory, right down to Joseph Farah dreaming once again of a Hillary perp walk -- after all, one of the reason it was founded in 1997 is to serve as a repository for anti-Clinton sentiment.
It's taken surprisingly long for an organization that professes to be a "news" operation, but CNSNews.com has 
Whenever Larry Klayman doesn't get his way in the courtroom -- which is frequently given how 
You'd think that with all the 
The Media Research Center has been getting a lot of mileage out of the revelation that ABC's George Stephanopoulos donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation; one fundraising email declared Stephanopoulos "corrupt" while begging for money. As Paul Waldman at the Washington Post 
Bill Federer has a thing he does called the "American Minute," which his website 
For years, CNSNews.com has been 
The president has been catching flak for having honored Freddie Gray by sending three White House representatives to his funeral, and similarly honoring Michael Brown last year, while neglecting to send anyone to the funerals of several police officers killed in the line of duty in recent months. One would have to be profoundly gullible to believe that these instances of “careless disregard” were oversights.
Last week, the Media Research Center's Ken Shepherd 
WorldNetDaily has a 
The April unemployment numbers were good enough that CNSNews.com's Ali Meyer had to at least acknowledge them before burying them in cherry-picked bad news, as is 
We've
